Next time, use a dictionary...

or else you get a rather amusing and embarrassing moment if you use words you do not know the meaning of.

link

Little Brother released with Creative Commons

Last week saw the newest book by Cory Doctorow released - Little Brother. Doctorow is one of my favorite bloggers at Boing Boing and he's also becoming one of my favorite writers. So I was rather excited about Little Brother, especially as the plot really hits a string with todays freedom vs. security debate: contemporary school children rebelling against the ever more intruding invasion of privacy these days; defeating tracking and snooping measures. It's even more interesting to read because the surveillance technology, and the ways to counter it, in the book are real or nearly real.

However if you are like me, always broke, the problem with wanting to read the newest releases is that it usually costs you money you don't have at the time. Luckily Doctorow is one of those writers who understands that it is better to have a lot of people read your work and not all of them paying, then to have every reader pay for your book, but not having a lot of readers in the end. So in the spirit that books should be shared as much as possible Doctorow released Little Brother as a free e-book under a Creative Commons license.


This is smart, because most people are willing to try things when they are free and then pay for the real book when they like it. I know I will buy the book when I have some money, but in the mean time I can enjoy the free e-version. Plus I can link it here so that it evens reaches a bigger audience. I've read the first few chapters today and this book should be read by every sf-fan.

Get. Reading. Now.

Net Neutrality and a rather unorthodox way of defending it.

The internets have been in a kind of turmoil ever since the new CEO of Virgin, Neil Berkett, said in a interview that according to him net neutrality is bogus. Simply put net neutrality means that a provider does not discriminate between the websites and internetcompanies that pay them and those that do not. However Virgin suggested that they ought to discriminate; putting the websites that pay them on the fast lane, faster content loading, and those that do not pay Virgin on the slow lane, slower content loading and thus less user comfort.

Now this is rather serious as it would effectively mean that Virgin would decide for you which websites are easily accesible and which are not. Not surprisingly this has caused a lot of protest and already a movement that defends net-neutrality started and is growing as we speak.
So far nothing out of the ordinary. Here you have your average protest site, with some nice although a bit amatuerish protest-video's on it. The message is clear and they show how you can contribute by posting your own protest-video or putting their banner on your website. The only thing out of the ordinary is the rather, ahum, prominent insight the video-hostess shows on camera. But hey, it is 2008 we are no longer cavemen who stop functioning the moment we see only a hint of a boobie.

However after searching a bit more about net neutrality I came across what is probably the most unorthodox way of defending net neutrality. Our video-hostess returns and this time she 'promises' to make a man out of every virgin that is willing to defend net-neutrality.
Clearly this is a joke, the video-hostess who goes by the name of Tania Derveaux is a Belgian political activist and a few years ago she promised to give 40.000 blow'jobs' if people would vote for her during the elections. She kept her word and to everyone who voted for her a video was sent with Tania's blowjob assistant, a japanese actress, who simulated giving oral stimulation.

Now I have mixed feelings about this whole 'get the virgins support' action. On the one hand it is kind of funny. Personally I don't think it is really that funny but I applaud the effort to combat greedy Virgin CEO's in a lighthearted manner. Plus it does gets the attention of people, especially the 18+ plus virgin kind of people.
But on the other hand I wonder if these kind of jokes do not do more harm then good for the cause. It's hard to take a protest movement serious when one of its figureheads is willing to trade sex for support, even when it is meant as a joke. And it might also push away the people that would otherwise have supported you. The whole degrading of women issue I leave to the feminists, I want to stay as far away from that discussion as possible.

I wonder. I just hope it won't bite the pro net neutrality in the behind.

Bizarre

Now this is a rather bizarre story. I wonder why no one just stood still for a moment to realize it was a false alarm. If the police is going to pull out every time someone calls about a bloke with a camera they will have severe problem with getting other things done, say catching criminals?

Amnesty Waterboarding Ad

Amnesty is launching a new ad that shows a man being subjected to waterboarding, a interrogation technique currently used by the U.S. government whereby terrorist suspects have water forced down their throat simulating drowning.
Pretty shocking footage and this is just a few seconds with a actor in a controlled environment, imagine how it must be in reality.

The thing is though, besides the obvious wrongness of employing torture, why do people think you actually get useful intelligence out of it? Most people will tell everything you want to hear after only a few minutes of waterboarding. Even Dubya would probably admit he masterminded the 9-11 attacks if he got a few gulps of waterboarding.

Oh well, I am pretty sure that whichever candidate wins, Barack, Clinton or Mcain, the use of torture will be put to an end, hopefully.

Link to Amnesty Ad, not suitable for young children.